CLASSROOM in the ERA of UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING SMART CLASSROOM 1 Introducti On: from UBICOMP to Smart Classroom
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CLASSROOM IN THE ERA OF UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING SMART CLASSROOM CHANGHAO JIANG, YUANCHUN SHI, GUANGYOU XU AND WEIKAI XIE Institute of Human Computer Interaction and Media Integration Computer Science Department, Tsinghua University Beijing, 100084, P.R.China E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Abstract: This paper first presents four essential characteristics of futuristic classroom in the upcoming era of ubiquitous computing: natural user interface, automatic capture of class events and experience, context-awareness and proactive service, collaborative work support. Then it elaborates the details in the design and implementation of the ongoing Smart Classroom project. Finally, it concludes by some self-evaluation of the project’s present accomplishment and description of its future research directions. Keywords: Ubiquitous Computing, Intelligent Environment, Multimodal Human- Computer Interaction, Smart Classroom 1 Introducti on: From UBICOMP to Smart Classroom Desktop and laptop have been the center of human-computer interaction since the late of last century. As is a typical situation of human’s dialogue with computer that a single user sits in front of a screen with keyboard and pointing device, interacting with a collection of applications [Winograd 1999]. In this model, people often feel that the cumbersome lifeless box is only approachable through complex jargon that has nothing to do with the tasks for which they actually use computers. Too much of their attention is distracted from the real job to the box. Deeper contemplation on valuable matured technologies tells us: the most profound technologies are those that disappear, which means they weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it [Weiser 1991]. We use them everyday, everywhere even without notice of them. Based on this point of view, computer is far from becoming part of our life. Mark Weiser first initiated the notion of Ubiquitous Computing (UBICOMP) at Xerox PARC [Weiser 1993], which envisioned, in the upcoming future, ubiquitous interconnected computing devices could be accessed everywhere and used effortlessly, unobtrusively even without people’s notice of them, just as electricity or telephones of today. This inspiring view of prospect has been accepted and spread so fast and widely that in a short time of a few years, many ambitious projects have been proposed and carried on to welcome the advent of UBICOMP. There are a bunch of branch research fields under the banner of UBICOMP, such as Mobile Computing, Wearable Computing and also Intelligent Environment, etc. The focus of this paper, Smart Classroom, belongs to the field of Intelligent Environment. But what is Intelligent Environment? In our point of view, we define it as an augmented spacious environment populated with many sensors, actuators and computing devices. T hese components are interwoven and integrated into a distributed computing system which is able to perceive its context through sensors, to execute intelligent logic on computing devices and serve its occupants by actuators. (In some research projects, Intelligent Environment is also referred as Interactive Space, Smart Space etc.) In researches of Intelligent Environment, there are several relevant and challenging issues need to be solved, such as the interconnection of computing devices on many different scales, the handling of various mobility problems caused by user’s movement, and network protocol, software infrastructure, application substrates, user interfaces issues etc. Although many projects have been conducted in the name of Intelligent Environment, they have different emphases. Some focus on the integration of different sensing modalities [Coen 1999, HAL 2000], some aim at the adaptability of Intelligent Environment to user’s preference [Mozer 1999], some are interested in automatic captur e of events and rich interactions that occurs in an Intelligent Environment [eClass 2000, Adowd 2000], and some target at facilitating the collaboration of multi-user multi-device within a technology -rich environment [Interactive Workspace 2000, Fox 2000]. We can easily enumerate several other ongoing Intelligent Environment project s with different specializations, such as Georgia Tech’s Aware Home [Aware Home 1999, Kidd 1999], IBM Research’s DreamSpace [DreamSpace], Microsoft Research’s EasyLiving [EasyLiving] etc. Our institute developed special interest in exploring the impact of ubiquitous computing to education. This leads to the project of Smart Classroom. The Smart Classroom is a physical experimental environment, which integrates multimodal human computer interface with CSCW modules collaborating through inter-agent communication language to provide a smart space for lecturer’s natural use of computer to give class to distance learning students. In the rest of this paper, we ’re going to first present our views of futuristic classroom in UBICOMP. And then toward the ideal model of classroom, which sounds a little utopian, we’ll explain the idea and focus of our exploration. Later some details in the design and implementation of our present work will be illustrated. We’ll conclude by a short description of our future goals. 2 What Should Classroom in The Era of UBICOMP Be Like? Michael H. Coen from MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab said, “Predicting the future is notoriously difficult”. [Coen 1999] Yes, we’re not able to prescribe what future would be, but we’re able to create toward what we think it would be. In our point of view, the following features are essential to a smart classroom in the era of UBICOMP, and will serve as the guidelines in our ongoing Smart Classroom project. We have generalized four characteristics of futuristic classroom, which are: natur al user interface, automatic capture of class events and experience, context-awareness and proactive service, collaborative work support. 2.1 Natural user interface As Mark Weiser has observed, “Applications are of course the whole point of ubiquitous computing”. In accordance with this essence of UBICOMP, it is necessary for a smart classroom to free its occupant’s attention to computer. To rescue people’s energy from irrelevant interaction with computer to the intentioned goal, allowing user’s interaction with computer as naturally as possible is vital. In such a new paradigm of human-computer interaction, people input information into computer in their most familiar and accustomed ways like voice, gesture, eye-gaze, expressions etc. Auxiliary input devices like keyboard, mouse, are not necessary. In the reverse side, computer tends to serve people like an intelligent assistant. It utilizes technologies like projector display, voice synthesis, avatar, etc. This is what we call natural user interface. To get a clearer image, suppose a lecturer in the Smart Classroom conducting the class by voice. “Let’s go to chapter two”. Computer recognizes phonetic command and projects the wanted courseware of chapter two on display. Lecturer also uses hand gesture as a virtual mouse to annotate on the projected electronic board. Through combination of eye gaze (or finger pointing) and voice command, lecturer can zoomed in the image of an area in the projector to give emphasized explanation on a specific topic. 2.2 Automatic capture of class events and experience This is what eClass project of Gatech called “automated capture, integration and access” problem . We use computer in classroom not only to improve the quality of teaching activity, but also to augment its capability, which was impracticable traditionally. The automatic capture of class event and experience belongs to such capabilities. It’s not just record of video and audio in the environment, which is common in traditional distance learning-television broadcasting program. It includes the record of group collaboration, multimedia events, multiple channels of human computer interaction, etc, all the events and experience that happened in the environment. The captured events and experience should be assembled into a kind of multimedia compound document. People can recreate the class experience by play the recorded multimedia compound document, and also can search a specific event or query knowledge within the compound document. This technology provides lecture content to students who are unable to attend the class in person, as well as to those who wish to review the materials later. For example, suppose a lecturer giving a class on Artificial Intelligence in a Smart Classroom. All the audio, video information, lecturer’s annotation events, student’s question events, Smart Classroom ’s controlling of lights, slides, etc, are recorded into a multimedia compound document. When a student wants to review the knowledge of Alpha-Beta Pruning algorithm, he can just query about it through his laptop computer, and rewind to the previous talk on it for a quick review and then comes back. After the class, students can also replay the document to recreate the class experience. 2.3 Context-awareness and proactive service What is context-awareness? According to Dey & Abowd (from Gatech 1999), “context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity, where an entity can be a person, place, physical or computational object”, “context-awareness is to perceive the context by system so as to provide task -relevant information and/or services to a user, wherever they may be”. Which